Abstract:
The challenges to communication faced by deaf/blind individuals are enormous. Without the availability of input through audition or vision, the sense of touch becomes the primary means of communication with the outside world. A variety of methods of communication that are based on stimulation of the tactual sensory system have been developed over the past century. These methods include both "artificial" tactual devices (designed to encode acoustic signals for display through stimulators applied to the skin) and "natural" methods of tactual communication (which have generally evolved within the deaf-blind community and require no special transformation devices).
Although substantial progress has been made in recent years on the development of artificial tactual aids to speech reception, the natural method of tactual speech reception referred to as "Tadoma" has led to the most successful results to date. In the Tadoma method, the deaf-blind person places a hand on the face and neck of the talker to monitor the various articulatory actions associated with speech production. The Tadoma method is important both in its demonstration of the potential of the tactual sense for communication and in its implications for the design of artificial sensory aids.
We will describe the results of studies conducted with a group of experienced deaf/blind users of the Tadoma method that document their abilities for speech reception, speech production, and linguistic competence. Information-transfer rates for speech reception through Tadoma will be compared to rates for other methods of natural tactual communication, including the tactual reception of sign language and fingerspelling. Finally, we will describe previous and ongoing efforts in the development and evaluation of artificial tactual devices for speech communication (including work with a synthetic Tadoma system and with a multi-finger tactual stimulating device) and compare results obtained with these displays to those obtained through Tadoma.